MacDworkin Redux

A piece of legislation that has largely flown under the radar of the free speech and pro-sex advocates passed through the Minnesota Senate this week. The legislation proposes a ban on MN government business travelers from staying in hotels that offer premium porn channels, at least those offering what the legislators are defining as "violent" pornography. Note that this has nothing to do with MN State workers purchasing porn viewing on the state's dime, which is presumably already prohibited, but represents a state-mandated boycott of lodging that does not meet the "clean hotels" designation. (There is an exception in the legislation for state business travelers who cannot find a "clean hotel" in the area they are traveling in, however, they are also required to provide written proof to that effect.)

Clearly out to win some kind of Orwell award, the bill's sponsor, Democratic State Senator Tarryl Clark stated, "This bill is not about policing personal choices. The bill is about taking another step in reducing sexual violence in our society."

Also, proof that the usual suspects from the Stop Porn Culture crowd have had an influence here, Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault executive director Donna Dunn notes that the legislation is meant to target material that "show[s] degrading and body-punishing sex".

Further details here, here, here, and here. Text of the legislation here.

What stands out about this legislation is that it has not come from the usual suspects on the religious right (though the "clean hotel" list in the US is maintained by these groups) nor is it justified on "decency" grounds. Rather, the bill was sponsored by a Democrat, lobbied for by a coalition of feminist anti-sexual violence groups (specifically, the Mens' Action Network (who maintain a page on the subject here), the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault, and, notably, the Minnesota Department of Health Injury and Violence Prevention Unit), and specifically touted as prevention of sexual violence. More chillingly, a document by the MDH Injury and Violence Prevention Unit, "The Promise of Primary Prevention of Sexual Violence: A Five-Year Plan To Prevent Sexual Violence and Exploitation in Minnesota" specifically highlights porn and "sexual objectification" as a causal agent in sexual violence and recommends legislative and other state-sponsored strategies against it.

If this kind of thing coming out of the great state of Minnesota sounds familiar, one needs to go back some 25 years to the heyday of the Dworkin/MacKinnon Ordinance, which was first passed by the Minneapolis City Council in 1983 (though vetoed by the mayor, who recognized the legislation would clearly lose on constitutional grounds). The language of the present legislation comes right out of the earlier Dworkin/MacKinnon legislation. While the authors claim that legislation does not target all sexually explicit material shown at hotels, it broadly defines the targeted material as follows:

"pornographic image or performance" means a sexually explicit image or performance that objectifies or exploits its subjects by eroticizing domination, degradation, or violence.

(Also, as is typical of the hypocrisy of such legislation, while it broadly defines a wide range of pornographic content as "violent" by definition, violent non-porn movies shown on hotel movie channels, such as Saw or Captivity, get a free pass.)

Unfortunately, there seems to be little sustained opposition to this legislation (other than from the hotel lobby), and the Minnesota ACLU website doesn't see fit to mention it. The legislation has a good chance of passing, though how it will stand up if challenged in court is less clear – the bill uses the same ideologically-loaded language struck down in Booksellers v. Hudnut. I urge readers in Minnesota to write their legislators and raise awareness of this issue.

Meanwhile, in Texas, a bill passed last year charging a $5 per head "pole tax" on strip-club patrons is scheduled to go before the Texas State Supreme Court this week. What is notable about this legislation is that it too was passed on grounds of "preventing sexual violence", mandating that the tax be used to fund anti-sexual violence groups. While this may seem non-problematic on the surface, it once again, mandates a direct link between the sex industry and violence against women, and proposes a sin tax as a partial solution.

Like the Minnesota legislation, the Texas bill was sponsored by a Democratic legislator, State Representative Ellen Cohen, and backed by a coalition of anti-sexual violence groups. It should also come as no surprise that Robert Jensen was one of the consultants on this piece of legislation and that a women's center at Jensen's institution, University of Texas, is one of the proposed recipients of the largess of this tax.

More here, here, and here.

While these pieces of anti-porn legislation are a great deal less far-reaching than many earlier anti-porn legislative efforts in the US, or current ones in some European and Commonwealth countries, such legislation is clearly meant to set a precedent. Laws specifically linking pornography to violence against women that might stand up to constitutional challenges may be used as justification for more far-reaching legislation in the future.

Some Hot Air from the Windy City

One of the favorite anti-porn radical feminist talking points is that porn and porn culture represent the "status quo" and that the radical feminist movement is marginalized and without political power. The counter-examples, of course, are legion, ranging from Dworkin and MacKinnon's role in the Meese Commission hearings to present-day radical feminist-inspired legislation against prostitution and pornography in places like Sweden and the UK.

The latest example comes in the form of a press release from DePaul University College of Law, advertising their upcoming "Valentine’s Day Distinguished Family Violence Lecture" (you really can't make this stuff up), which features an appearance by everybody's favorite sensitive radical feminst guy, Robert Jensen, appearing along with the sheriff of Cook County, Illinois (Chicago and environs), Tom Dart, who will be speaking on "pornography's impact on crime":

Dart will explore pornography’s impact in key areas, including crime, and highlight recent initiatives designed to address sex trafficking in Cook County.

Dart is described on his website as a "rising star in Illinois politics" (not exactly something to brag about these days) and a former legislator turned law-enforcement official. Among his accomplishments as sheriff:

Under Dart’s directive, the Sheriff’s Police have initiated a variety of stings, crackdowns, and investigations of criminal activity. He has been in the forefront in breaking up dog fighting rings and presided over the arrests of prostitution rings that use the internet as their advertising arm.

The press release also adds that Dart will be leading an "all-male panel" following Jensen's lecture. For the most part, this is the same-old same-old, hearkening back to the days when crusaders in law enforcement, clergy, and the upright men of the city met about stamping out vice. What's different, is that now the role of clergy is played by a radical feminist man with pretensions of being "prophetic".

Pornographers as the "status quo"? Show me an example where somebody from the porn industry is having a similar meeting of minds with politicians or law enforcement officials and maybe I'll entertain the idea. Until then, I think those of us in the reality-based community will tend to believe otherwise.

Renegade & Robert Jensen in MN: TPoP

Rather than repost the whole thing, I am just using the link method.

Here is the initial rundown.

What a fool believes

There's an interesting post about TPoP written by a student at UT Austin (where Robert Jensen calls home) in a class blog. Its pretty clear that this student isn't thinking critically about what Jensen or TPoP is telling him, and generally, he doesn't come across as the brightest bulb in the pack. But what's interesting here is what "facts" are picked up about porn and people in it by those who aren't engaging this subject critically. To wit:

...Professor Robert Jenson is a professor from UT who has been following and analyzing the pornography industry from a feminist perspective for over 10 years. He was in the movie and also at the screening....The Doc then went into how the pornography industry objectifies women. Most porn stars have little to no education, and are basically forced into prostitution/stripping/pornography as a viable alternative to making money to support themselves. They could make more in a day at a pornography shoot than they could make all month as a waitress or at any other entry-level job position. Pornography filmmakers take advantage of that and force these girls to act and fake pleasure in their films, while the girl is often extremely not happy to say the least. She just does it because it is a job. The filmmakers often make these girls do "fantasy" type things that are far beyond normal sexual acts. This causes some pornography consumers own sex lives to be extremely twisted and perverted, usually destroying their relationships with their wives and girlfriends. The industry makes over a billion dollars a year. All in all this was definitely an interesting documentary that I would recommend to anyone in the class.
(more)

(Emphasis mine.) I think this speaks volumes about the real message TPoP and Jensen are conveying, in spite of the disclaimers to the contrary. For all their rhetoric about being absolutely against media that defames women, these people are certainly happy to engage in some rather nasty defamation of a whole group of women when it serves their purposes. "Honest and nonjudgmental" indeed!

A nice little smackdown....

Of Robert Jensen, in an opinion piece in the UNLV Rebel Yell, by Marisa Christensen (who you might recognize from earlier piece critical of Melissa Farley).

New Antiporn Documentary: The Price of Pleasure

Well, the documentary we've been hearing about from the APRF crowd for the last – what, 4 years, at least – has finally been finished. This was the one that was being put together by Chyng Sun a few years back, and more recently by Robert Jensen and Miguel Picker. Website here:

http://www.thepriceofpleasure.com/

Trailer here.

The press kit promises, "Honest and nonjudgmental, the film paints both a nuanced and complex portrait of how pleasure and pain, commerce and power, and liberty and responsibility are intertwined in the most intimate aspects of human relations." But one look at the who the writers are (Chyng Sun and Robert Wosnitzer), not to mention the obvious slant even in the trailer, belies the idea that there's anything "honest and nonjudgmental" going on here.

Witnesses for the prosecution are, not unexpectedly, Robert Jensen and Gail Dines, but Pamela Paul, Ariel Levy, and Sarah Katherine Lewis are also brought in to further the case against porn and the sex industry. (And apparently the much-circulated video of the anti-porn statement by Chomsky is from this film also.) Interestingly, the documentary also feature some pro-porn folks, most notably, our own Ernest Greene, who, based on the trailer at least, seems to get some good points in, though I have no idea what his original interview versus what made it into the film is like. Joanna Angel seems to be treated to more of a hatchet job, where they select some "worst of" moments from her videos and use them to undermine her statements. Similarly, statements from fans are selected to come across as very self-incriminating.

If anybody's anxious to have a look at it, its scheduled to play in Austin, Montreal, and New York over the next several weeks, and it may play elsewhere after that. I have my doubts it will have anything like a major release (1-hour documentaries usually don't), but, is scheduled for video release next month from the Media Education Foundation, but like other MEF releases, are only available to educational institutions at $150-250 per copy. Like the Killing us Softly and Dreamworlds series (also from MEF), its likely this video end up having a long life life in women's studies and "media education" classrooms, fueling misguided outrage for years to come.

Upcoming online forum on sex work, trafficking, and human rights

For Immediate Release

Contact:
Elizabeth Wood
Phone: provided upon request
Email: elizabeth (at) sexinthepublicsquare (dot) org
Co-founder, SexInThePublicSquare.org
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Nassau Community College

Sex In The Public Square Presents:
Sex Work, Trafficking, and Human Rights: A Public Forum

New York, February 20, 2008 — Ten prominent sex worker advocates, writers, researchers will be publicly discussing the issues of sex work and trafficking from a human rights and harm reduction perspective, February 25 - March 3, on SexInThePublicSquare.org. The week-long online conversation will conclude with a summary statement on March 3, International Sex Worker Rights Day.

Sex work and trafficking are two issues that must be discussed as distinct yet intersecting, and we've invited some of the smartest sex worker advocates we know to help sort out the complexities. "This forum is not about debating whether or not we should be using a harm reduction and human rights approach instead of the more mainstream abolitionist and prohibitionist approach to sex work," explains Elizabeth Wood, co-founder of Sex In The Public Square and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Nassau Community College. "Instead our goal is to create a space for nuanced exploration of the human rights and harm reduction approach so that we can use it more persuasively."

Wood explains: "The human rights and harm reduction approach seeks to reduce the dangers that sex workers face and to stop human rights abuses involved in the movement of labor across borders, a movement which occurs in the service of so many industries. We want people to be able to learn about this perspective, and to develop and refine it, without having to dilute that conversation by debating the legitimacy of sex work."

Questions and themes include:

Defining our terms: Is the way that we define "porn" clear? "Prostitution"? "Sex work" in general? What happens when we say "porn" and mean all sexually explicit imagery made for the purpose of generating arousal and others hear "porn" as indicating just the "bad stuff" while reserving "erotica" for everything they find acceptable? When we say sex work is it clear what kinds of jobs we're including?

Understanding our differences: How do inequalities of race, class and gender affect the sex worker rights movement? Are we effective in organizing across those differences?

Identifying common ground: What are the areas of agreement between the abolitionist/prohibitionist perspective and the human rights/harm reduction perspective? For example, we all agree that forced labor is wrong. We all agree that nonconsensual sex is wrong. Is it a helpful strategic move to by highlighting our areas of agreement and then demonstrating why a harm reduction/human rights perspective is better suited to addressing those shared concerns, or are we better served by distancing ourselves from the abolition/prohibition-oriented thinkers?

Evaluating research: What do we think of the actual research generated by prominent abolitionist/prohibitionist scholars like Melissa Farley, Gail Dines, and Robert Jensen? Can we comment on the methods they use to generate the data on which they base their analysis, and then can we comment on the logic of their conclusions based on the data they have?

Framing the issues: What are our biggest frustrations with the way that the human rights/harm reduction perspective is characterized by the abolitionist/prohibitionist folks? How can we effectively respond to or reframe this misrepresentations? What happens when "I oppose human trafficking" becomes a political shield that deflects focus away from issues of migration, labor and human rights?

Exploring broader economic questions: How does the demand for cheap labor undermine human rights-based solutions to exploitation in all industries, including the sex industry?

Confirmed participants include:

• Melissa Gira is a co-founder of the sex worker blog Bound, Not Gagged, the editor of Sexerati.com, and reports on sex for Gawker Media's Valleywag.
• Chris Hall is co-founder of Sex In The Public Square and also writes the blog Literate Perversions.
• Kerwin Kay has written about the history and present of male street prostitution, and about the politics of sex trafficking. He has been active in the sex workers rights movement for some 10 years. He also edited the anthology Male Lust: Pleasure, Power and Transformation (Haworth Press, 2000) and is finishing a Ph.D. in American Studies at NYU.
• Anthony Kennerson blogs on race, class, gender, politics and culture at SmackDog Chronicles, and is a regular contributor to the Blog for Pro-Porn Activism.
• Antonia Levy co-chaired the international "Sex Work Matters: Beyond Divides" conference in 2006 and the 2nd Annual Feminist Pedagogy Conference in 2007. She teaches at Brooklyn College, Queens College, and is finishing her Ph.D. at the Graduate Center at CUNY.
• Audacia Ray is the author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In On Internet Sexploration (Seal Press, 2007), and the writer/producer/director of The Bi Apple. She blogs at WakingVixen.com hosts and edits Live Girl Review and was longtime executive editor of $pread Magazine
• Amber Rhea is a sex worker advocate, blogger, and organizer of the Sex 2.0 conference on feminism, sexuality and social media, and co-founder of the Georgia Podcast Network. Her blog is Being Amber Rhea.
• Ren is a sex worker advocate, a stripper, Internet porn performer, swinger, gonzo fan, BDSM tourist, blogger, history buff, feminist expatriate who blogs at Renegade Evolution. She is a founder of the Blog for Pro-Porn Activism and a contributor to Bound, Not Gagged and Sex Workers Outreach Project - East.
• Stacey Swimme has worked in the sex industry for 10 years. She is a vocal sex worker advocate and is a founding member of Desiree Alliance and Sex Workers Outreach Project USA.
• Elizabeth Wood is co-founder of Sex In The Public Square, and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Nassau Community College. She has written about gender, power and interaction in strip clubs, about labor organization at the Lusty Lady Theater, and she blogs regularly about sex and society.

To read or participate in the forum log on to http://sexinthepublicsquare.org

For more information contact Elizabeth Wood at elizabeth (at) sexinthepublicsquare (dot) org.

Robert Jensen sucks. There is no question.

Bob goes to Vegas and harasses porn chicks, but wants you to remember...

"The many different women who engage in sex in front of a camera make that choice to be used in pornography under a wide range of psychological, social and economic conditions. The choices women make to reduce themselves to sexual objects for men’s masturbation are complex, and we should be cautious about generalizations and judgments."

Emphasis MINE.

Well gee Bob, what's that if not some big old generalization and judgment right there????

You fucking fuck. Nary you mind, you can now get college credit off the backs of those women via attending Wheelock Anti Porn Conferences, you can be asked to leave them alone at an Adult Industry event and try to engage them anyway. you can fund you cause by selling, oh , I mean asking for donations, for your slide show which features their images (used without their consent), no , nevermind any of this...You should not generalize or judge them for allowing themsevles to be used, objectified, and reduced.

Unless you use them like Bob does, of course.

Hey Bob, how much have you and the crew spent on porn, you fucking asshole????

(h/t to Anthony)

Degrading?

As a precursor to my eventual full book review of Robert Jensen's Getting Off, I wanted to post an excerpt from the chapter entitled "Pornography as a Mirror," in which Jensen colorfully describes scenes from several porn movies in order to drive home the point of how awful and misogynistic all porn is.

With all the porn Jensen has watched (for research purposes, you understand), one can only assume that he summarized these particular movies because they're the most effective at validating his thesis - and the most likely to garner a reaction of shock from readers. So what's the deal with this...?

A scene from Delusional, a 2000 release from Vivid:

Lindsay, the film's main character, is a woman slow to return to dating after she caught her husband cheating on her. She says she is waiting for the right man - a sensitive man - to come along. Her male coworker, Randy, clearly would like to be that man but must wait as Lindsay explores other sexual experiences, first with a woman named Alex, whom she meets online and assumes is a man. Later, after Alex and Lindsay have sex with a man in the kitchen of a restaurant, Lindsay is finally ready to accept Randy's affection. He takes her home and tells her, "I'll always be there for your no matter what. I just want to look out for you." Lindsay lets down her defenses, and they embrace.

After kissing and removing their clothes, Lindsay begins oral sex on Randy while on her knees on the couch, and he then performs oral sex on her while she lies on the couch. They then have intercourse, with Lindsay saying, "Fuck me, fuck me, please" and "I have two fingers in my ass - do you like that?" This leads to the usual progression of positions: She is on top of him while he sits on the couch, and then he enters her vaginally from behind before he asks, "Do you want me to fuck you in the ass?" She answers in the affirmative. "Stick it in my ass," she says. "I love the way you slide into my asshole. ... Deep in my ass. ... I'm coming on your cock in my ass." After two minutes of anal intercourse, the scene ends with him masturbating and ejaculating on her breasts.

So, wait. Where's the degrading part in that scene?

It just sounds like sex. And by some people's standards, pretty vanilla sex. Even for people who would consider it at the kinky end of their personal spectrum, due to the dirty talk and assplay, I really can't imagine anyone finding it degrading who didn't have bigger hang-ups about sex in general. In fact, the only part of that excerpt that I see as degrading to women in any way is this:

Lindsay lets down her defenses

Note, that's not a line from the movie. Those are Jensen's chosen words to describe the onscreen events. I find it very telling that he uses language which casts the woman in the passive role, and the man in an active, even conquering role, with the implication of sex being a conquest and women having "defenses" which must be "broken down" by men.

This is, of course, the sexual script that's reinforced by the dominant culture day in and day out, to the detriment of everyone. This skewed view of gender roles (as Figleaf would say, women as the "no-sex" class) is exactly what Jensen claims to be opposing. Yet with a few words, he's revealed volumes about how entrenched he still is in sex-negative cultural norms.

[Cross-posted at Being Amber Rhea]

More of AK Getting Off on "Getting Off"

Having now read Chris Hall's excellent review of Robert Jensen's Getting Off over at Sex in the Public Square (and greatly anticipating the lovely Amber Rhea's forthcoming review of same) has really brought up some points that I failed to address in my initial "review".

For starters, to quote this excerpt from Chris's review:

He does not, of course, ever say that we should just cloister ourselves and live lives of sexual abstinence. But when he does try to give solutions to the nightmare world that he depicts, Robert Jensen’s words lose their fire. His description of a positive sexuality is vague and bloodless, and speaks little of sex as a physical act but in semi-mystical terms about light and mystery and touch. It’s bland and dull, but even worse, it gives little in the way of practical advice. In the 90’s, I came away from reading sex-positive writers like Carol Queen and Susie Bright with sophisticated ways of thinking about safer sex techniques, talking honestly about limits, and what consent was and wasn’t. All that I get from Jensen is an admonition that we should try to make sex be more about light, and less about heat. (And god help me, I’m still not sure what that means.)

It took until this morning before reading that graph when it really did hit me: what Jensen means by his version of a "bloodless sexuality" that contains "more heat and less light" is similar to what the cultural feminists of the 1980s described as a "feminist sexuality" that would be imposed as much on women as on men. In that vision, sex would be concieved as much less a physical pleasure and more of a transcending, supernatural presence which would somehow go beyond the experiences and sensations of the individuals; more of a sprirtual and universal experience in communal bonding than any individualistic physical act. Of course, such a transcendent phonenom would be totally shorn of such "patriarchial" nonsenses as erections, body fluids, or even orgasms; such trite physical sensations would be whisked away by the sheer revolutionary outer-body experience that "feminist sex" would produce in men freed from their evil "patriarchial" ideas of power and domination. It's almost as if Jensen and his radicalfeminist mentors see his crusade against "masculinity" and the porn that he alleges is the foundation behind it as the key to ending world war, hunger, economic and social inequality, and most other ills of the world.

The problem with such a utopia, though, is that it comes dangerously close to an equally restrictive and "transcending" view of sexuality: that of the Religious Right.

It is no accident that the social conservatives have so appropriated much of Jensen's core theory about male sexual rapicity towards women; albeit with the aim of supporting and abetting their own traditional sexual morality of restraining sex within the act of procreation within marriage. The contraposition of the "liberating" and "beautiful" and "uplifting" power of what they call "the marital act" when "two become one" (or "when two become one") in the conception of a child, with the "ugly", "selfish", "compulsive", and "addictive" acts of sex for physical pleasure alone; has been a stable of conservative and traditionalist thought about sexuality since time immortal. Strangely enough, it has now been appropriated by the most sexually conservative feminists as a means of "protecting" women from the "male gaze", but with an added twist: "personal intimacy" and "emotional integrity" within codependent monogamy has replaced hetero marital procreation at the top of the privileged and sacred pyramid.

The emphasis may differ with each movement: the antipornradfems seek to regulate the supposed out-of-control nature of male sexuality at the hands of the "patriarchy"; while the fundamentalists target what they perceive as the threat of unbridled female sexuality in defiance of "God's law" (or "Allah's", or "Yawheh's" or any other deity of choice). But the effect is nevertheless the same: to inprision and restrict men's and women's sexual choices and impose a rather strained, exclusive, and repressive system of sexual regulation and choice by the use of shame and guilt (and with the full power of the State as a backup just in case the "gentle persuasion" and "conciousness raising" doesn't elicit the changes sought).

That such a reactionary concept of sexuality can be passed along as "progressive", even "Leftist" is one of the utter tragedies of this book....almost as much as the complete denial of female sexual agency that lurks just underneath the surface of Jensen's jerimiads.


The other thought that reared its head at me was about the individualistic approach that Jensen takes in his activism towards men who might be suspect to his illogic. He seems to see progressive activism as most of the culturalist Left and liberals of the 1970s do: as a means of consciousness raising of people already with "privilege" to confront, accept, and then repudiate such privilege and see the world as their apparant "victims" of such racial or gender or imperial privilege would. (Call it the "Walk a mile in their shoes" type of movement, if you will.)

This kind of activism sounds all well and good at first...but it ultimately suffers from the same flaw that most culturally-based movements falter on: the inability to take on fundamental physical institutions of inequality; and the confusion of individual acts of cruelty with institutional acts of inequality. Rape may be a universal crime of sexual anger and rage directed by men towards women (but don't forget anti-gay hate, either!!!), and certainly may be exploitable as part of larger hate campaigns against certain groups; but that doesn't change the basic fact that rape is for the most part an act of extreme violence done by an individual (or group of individuals) against an individual person.

Conversely, as much as many people might find facials or double penetration or anal sex "demeaning" and "filthy", the fact remains that even loving and caring and committed people can engage in such activities and find them personally upliftiing, or simply arousing. The difference is in the overall political and cultural outlook of whomever is making the prejudgment about such acts; not in the acts themselves.

On the other hand, though, laws specifically created to restrict and constrain sexual expression and behavior amongst consenting adults do far, far, far more damage to progressive activism than any of the dire consensual sex acts that so excise Jensen and his radfem mentors. Not only do they literally invite the State to intervene in matters of personal sexual tastes and asthetics that are better left to individual choice and free will; but they are the ultimate gateway to justifying more explicit political censorship.....the kind that has been traditionally used against the Left and against liberals in general for time immortal. Can't Jensen see the connection between McCarthyism and the anti-"homosexual menace" movements of the 1950s?? The intimate links between White supremacism and religious bigotry and sex crime so starkly seen in the castration and lynching of Black men (and rape of Black women) during the Jim Crow years??) The undercurrent of sexual bigotry and fear underlying the current memes against "illegal aliens" (read, anyone Latin@ who isn't a paid agent of the GOP or not useable as a slave for multinational corporations)?? The antiabortion movement and the attack on basic women's control of their own reproductive systems and all the "sluts get what they deserve" rhetoric??

Maybe Bob Jensen with his doctorate and his upper-middle-class background can overlook all this...but I as a working-class Black man certainly can't.

There are far, far more important issues of racial and gender and economic inequality -- and the institutions of capital and State that buttress and reinforce such inequality -- for liberals and Leftists to tackle; it is a distraction and a ruse and a dead end to get caught up in baiting and hating men for having impromptu erections (and women for getting damp panties and engorged clits) at the mere sight of imagery that doesn't fit a narrow ideologue's personal squicks. Save the hate for the rapists and true misogynists who earn it....and work the energy someplace else more fruitful than getting into every man's boxers....and every woman's panties.


[Cross-posted to The SmackDog Chronicles]

Bob's new book

Robert Jensen is coming out with a new book, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Still in pre-press, it promises to be "his most personal and difficult book to date" and "reignite one of the fiercest debates in contemporary feminism". We'll see.

All I have to say is – interesting choice of cover art, dude.

More here, including a link to a link to a recent radio interview with Jensen.